White House pulls nominations for Air Force and Army general counsel

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• The White House has flooded the Senate with nominations, but has pulled back two. Twenty-seven new nominations for judges, commissions and boards have been sent up. The Senate confirmed the earlier renomination of Ajit Pai as chairman of the FCC. But the White House withdrew the nominations of David Ehrhart for Air Force general counsel and of Ryan Dean Newman for Army general counsel. Ehrhart is an attorney at Lockheed Martin. Newman, an Army veteran, is acting assistant attorney general for legal policy. (White House)

• The Interior Department’s inspector general is now looking into Secretary Ryan Zinke’s use of charter flights. Zinke said he’s taken three of them since taking office in March, one costing over $12,000. Zinke maintains all of his travel was approved by Interior’s ethics officials. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned last week amid accusations of inappropriate travel expenditures. (Federal News Radio)

• President Trump has disbanded an advisory council designed to create better relationships between agency management and labor. Former President Barack Obama signed an executive order that created the National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations. It expired at the end of September, and Trump chose not to continue to it. Federal unions said they’re disappointed but not surprised by the president’s decision. (Federal News Radio)

• The Air Force is calling on retired pilots to help with the service’s shortage of airmen to fly its planes. The program asked 25 recent retirees to fill staff positions that require pilot experience. The Air Force is facing a shortage of 1,500 pilots. (Federal News Radio)

• The Army says it’s planning to roll out a new strategy to modernize its IT networks next week. The strategy, which the Army calls the chief of staff’s Network Path Forward, is set for a formal rollout next Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington. Officials said it will focus on rapid upgrades using technologies already available from industry. The new strategy comes just after Army leaders told Congress they wanted to redirect half a billion dollars in funding away from current IT programs, saying the network they’ve been building won’t be adequate for future fights. (Army)

• Agencies could soon have one fewer telecommunications vendor to choose from. The Justice Department approved CenturyLink’s acquisition of Level-3. The acquisition still remains subject to regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission, but the approval from DoJ is a major step in the process because it clears up any antitrust concerns. CenturyLink announced in October 2016 it wanted to buy Level-3 for $34 billion. (CenturyLink)

• The Office of Personnel Management has made quick work of naming a new technology leader. David Garcia is the new chief information officer for OPM. About a month after Dave DeVries retired from federal service, OPM shifted the position to a political one and appointed Garcia yesterday. Before coming to OPM, Garcia spent two years as the CIO for the state of Maryland. He also worked in the federal market, for the Army twice and for a federal contractor. Garcia becomes the fourth OPM CIO since the 2015 data breach. (Federal News Radio)

• Agencies have gotten better at records management, but as usual, there is room for improvement. The National Archives has released its annual Federal Agency Records Management Report. It shows 79 percent of agencies are managing all email in electronic format, most are hopeful they will reach that status by the end of 2019. Eighty percent of agencies are now also archiving email, as opposed to printing and filing them. (Federal News Radio)

• Struggles for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It’s having trouble with its continued adoption of financial management shared services. HUD’s Office of Inspector General reported multiple issues with the department’s New Core Financial Management Solution, including inaccurate transaction postings, differences between the general ledger and sub-ledgers, and data entry errors. (Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General)

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